GE announced plans to build the largest solar plant in the United States to produce its PrimeStar line of photovoltaic panels. A company press release said GE anticipates the new factory in Aurora, Colo., will employ 355 workers and will start production in 2012, with commercial availability in 2013. When complete, the new solar factory will highlight a $600 million investment in GE's solar business.
GE said in the press statement that the solar panels produced at the new factory will be more efficient, lighter weight and larger than conventional thin film panels, and that these lighter panels will facilitate easier installation and enable important applications including commercial rooftops. Larger-sized panels help to lower total system cost by reducing the amount of racking and electrical components required. Details
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Jim Lucy Blog
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Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.